This just in: The Primitive Entertainment Workshop has entered the online streaming radio station business! The PRIMITIVE SOUND SYSTEM is now up and running, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, for your listening pleasure!

The Primitive Sound System is hosted on Radionomy, and you can listen online in the flash player (after a short ad), which you can “pop out” of the page and hide in the background while you’re doing other stuff. I had the show playing all day on Sunday while I was working online, and the program only stopped to buffer once in an 8 or 9 hour period. There is also a “Radionomy” app available for Android, for those who like to listen on the go. I downloaded and tested the app, and it seemed to work fine. I was able to find my station in a matter of seconds with the search bar (just typed in “Primitive Sound System” and it was the first station on the list), and after another quick “advert,” it ran without any problems. So there are a few different ways to listen, depending on your needs and desires!

The station plays, primarily, music of the alternative and/or electronic persuasions. As the sole programmer, I come from the NEW WAVE generation, so the show is heavily 80’s weighted, particularly by synth-pop, post-punk, and “college” rock songs, but there is also a major TECHNO element to the mix. I actually like a variety of different music styles, so don’t be too surprised if you hear jazz or classic rock or reggae or novelty tunes or…who knows…

I’ve been collecting music since the early 1980s, and I’ve been a DJ for decades. My first gig was playing music at a friend’s house party on a dual cassette-deck back in 1988. I “went pro” in 1996 when I was hired to play techno music at a bar in Kelso, WA, and about a year later I started working for a local DJ company doing weddings, school dances, company picnics, and all that junk—and I still work the odd job for those folks every now and then. I’ve also done podcasts and live online radio shows in the past, but I’ve never RUN THE WHOLE SHOW, until now!

The part that I’ve found MOST fun so far has been making the personal promos. We’re pretty LOW-TECH here at the Workshop, so I’ve been recording audio with my phone, then using a freeware audio program (Audacity) to edit and enhance the files. I’ve done my best Tiny Tim impression and sung a promo, I’ve tried (very VERY badly) to do a Cagney impression, I’ve recorded my wife saying the name of the station and then enhanced her track with some echoes and effects, and I’ve even recorded the stupid cat meowing and mixed it with my younger daughter laughing… I’m hoping in the next week or two to start getting some interviews and maybe some rants recorded to slip in-between the tunes and make the station more “personal.” At this point, however, it’s mostly music.

Here’s some technical stuff / minor complaints that I have with the Radionomy site: (1) – Because of licensing (I’m guessing), the host sight has to “verify” the songs that I upload before they will let me play them. I have a love for old, weird, obscure tunes, though, so a LOT of the songs I’ve uploaded have been unverifiable, so I’m not able to spin some of my favorite songs (like “Nocturnal Me” by Echo and the Bunnymen, or “Take Me Now” by Vicious Pink, or “We Call It Acieed” by D-Mob…) (2) – Every once in a while, say once every 40 minutes or so, the station adds one of a handful of songs to my playlist by some lounge/jazz/new age band, which I’m guessing payed some fee or something to promote their act. I get it—I’m using the host site for free, so they get to take some liberties. I just wish the music was a little more “MY STYLE.” It’s not TOO far off from some of the older ambient or world beat albums that I own, but it’s still a bit unpleasant. (3) – This one’s a minor point, but as I’m a stickler for detail, it’s a bit frustrating. When I upload songs to Radionomy, they have to “find” the tracks, and the artist and title details are “locked” and not editable. Once they verify the track, they call it what they have in their database, and the artist and title data remain uneditable. Sometimes, however, the titles or artist info that they come up with don’t match what I meticulously typed into the computer when I loaded the CD in the first place. For instance, they called the band M.E.S.H. (an acid-house band) “S*M*A*S*H” and that’s just stupid. The band’s only song is “Meet Every Situation Head-On” or “M.E.S.H.” It’s printed on my CD cover and everything. In another case, they dropped the remix information from a song I posted by Jape. It was supposed to be “Floating (D.I.M. ReWork)” but they just called it “Floating.” The original, non-remixed version of the song is pretty boring, but when D.I.M. remixed it, the cut came alive, and my whole family likes that version. The audio that plays on the station is still the version that I uploaded, but listeners just won’t know that the track is a remix. Another particularly annoying mess-up happened when I uploaded an obscure old techno track, and Radionomy tried to say it was by Lil Wayne. I just deleted the song…

Those complaints notwithstanding, (none of them are deal breakers) I’m pretty happy with the station and the host, and I hope that listeners find the station entertaining! As I said, we’re hoping to have more ORIGINAL spoken word stuff to play soon, but for now there are a few home-made bits and a bunch of awesome tunes. Give it a listen, and let us know what you think!